According to a sector expert, there are three main issues with AI’s application in the food business, with the bulk of advantages now being linked to market research and advertising tactics, as demonstrated by Coca-Cola.
Since AI has become more prevalent in the food and beverage industry, there have been passionate discussions over whether it is wise to give up too much control in the name of automation.
China has arguably been one of the most technologically sophisticated economies in the past ten years, with technology and artificial intelligence (AI) being used in many aspects of the food value chain, from production to processing to retail and e-commerce. Nevertheless, these issues are still evident in China.
It’s important to make sure that AI can complement human responsibilities in the supply chain, says industry expert Todd Redwood, Global Food and Retail Managing Director at British Standards International (BSI).
At the recent Food and Beverage Innovation Forum (FBIF) in Shenzhen, China, Redwood said, “Over the past 20 years, we have seen the undeniable progress of AI, especially looking at the five major areas of recognition, which are handwriting recognition, speech recognition, image recognition, reading comprehension, and language understanding.”
About 20 years ago, test results indicated that AI performance was seen as being poorer and less competent than human performance. Today, however, this has changed, and AI performed even better than humans in a number of areas.
This demonstrates that AI is probably going to remain a part of many businesses, including the food and beverage sector, particularly in fields like marketing and market research where many food firms are already actively utilizing this technology to collect information and make choices.
However, he emphasized that in order to secure the greatest outcomes from the application of AI, prudence is especially required in three key areas of concern.
“Bias and discrimination, which enter at the point of training the AI algorithm, is the most significant one about which most people are concerned,” he continued.
“The performance of the AI is determined by what it is trained to do, especially given the rapid evolution of the technology – and here, data is king, and what firms must do when using AI is to ensure that the right data is provided to the algorithm when training, so it learns to do the right thing.”
Another area of concern has been privacy and security, with many people envisioning data breaches and personal information being leaked – this comes back to the security measures in place at each firm and is critical given that every [food firm] will carry customer and consumer data, and AI will gather even more of this.
“The final factor that is frequently stated is how an AI-led society will affect people’s lives, whether it will be employed for good or be capable of providing empathy when required – but humans will naturally [be the most humane so] when people ask me whether AI will replace human jobs, here I do say yes and no as some areas that lead to a lot of exhaustion can be replaced, but in more areas, it is much more likely that if managed well AI can enhance human jobs rather than replace them.”
AI in food and beverage
The market research, marketing, and advertising sectors of the food and beverage business are now where Redwood sees AI as having the greatest impact. We are aware of Coca-Cola’s usage of artificial intelligence (AI) for social media scanning to identify both their own and rival companies’ items that are trending online and utilize this data to target product innovation.
Additionally, “they have introduced intelligent vending machines in markets like Japan with a loyalty program that also serves to gather consumer preference and purchase data that can be used to train the algorithm.”
Therefore, it is evident that AI has a significant role and promise in market research and advertising, where it may really speed up and reduce the laboriousness of the entire process and decision-making.
“Such is the confidence in this technology that Nestle has mandated that all marketing programs be scanned by its internal AI before anything is released, to ensure that it can hit the necessary ROI – which comes back to it being not only cheaper but more efficient from a financial point of view,” says the author.
Product innovation, supply chain management, facility design, and tests for customers using the digital twin concept are other significant areas where AI is being applied in the manufacturing of food and beverages.